The EU has the capability of placing a soporific blanket over much of its politics and also has a reputation for only reforming at the point of crisis.
The last year has given it the opportunity to challenge both reputations. The EU held a citizen’s assembly driven Conference on the Future of Europe. (CoFoE). The idea was conceived by President Macron who in a 2019 speech called for this. It became an opportunity to try and raise the Union’s eyes above the trench warfare realpolitik of the EU.
The Conference’s genesis was complex, but impetus was given by the shenanigans played in the appointment/election of Von der Leyen as President of the Commission. The Parliament was unhappy at the way in which the spitzenkandidat process had been subverted. Von der Leyen, promised a mechanism by which it could be strengthened by promising to hold a conference in her statement for confirmation. The proposal rapidly came to include the use of citizen assemblies which it was hoped would enable innovative and orthogonal ideas to evolve. See also, my notes on my wiki.
The Conference was convened, it deliberated over 2021/2 and made its report to the final plenary held in April 2022. Important proposals were made on the topics of democracy, the rule of law, the EU in the world, and digitisation. The report also considered key economic and social issues in chapters on…
